Ask Gov. Rick Snyder about the signal achievement of his two years in office, and he'll likely cite the transformation of Michigan's business climate.

Gone is the onerous and confusing Michigan Business Tax, and in its place is a 6% flat corporate income tax -- a $1.8-billion reduction paid for by new taxes on pension income, and reductions in education funding and income tax credits for the poor, among other spending cuts.

Snyder has always maintained that reducing taxes for employers was a means, not an end; he promises that in the long run it will yield new jobs and tax revenues for our state.

But on the eve of his third State of the State address, it's far from clear whether the governor's giant tax shift is paying the promised dividends.

Income tax revenue is projected to jump 12.3% in the current fiscal year to $7.7 billion -- more than the 7.8% increase the state was anticipating in the wake of the pension tax hike. But we won't know until April how much of that increase can be traced to higher taxes on pensions.

Meanwhile, business tax revenue is projected to plunge 84% to $325 million in the fiscal year than ends in September.

The job market is improving, but slowly. Michigan's unemployment rate still exceeds the national average, and job growth is expected to slow in 2013 to 0.9%. Yet state officials remain confident that employment will ramp up in 2014 and beyond.

So where have business tax savings gone so far? Definitely not into hiring.

State Sen. Glenn Anderson, D-Westland, thinks he has the answer: into business owners' pockets.

There's little hard data to support his surmise, in part because the business tax cuts came with no built-in accountability or analysis to show whether they're driving job creation, and whether those new jobs are sufficient to balance out the pain from the cuts made to support them.

Bet on this: If schools or local governments or the poor had been handed $1.8 billion, the majority party in Lansing would be braying about exacting accountability requirements. And, frankly, there's nothing wrong with that. Did it work? What did the money buy? These are basic questions elected officials ought to ask about any major policy initiative.

Nearly two years after Snyder's tax shift was passed by the Legislature, and a year after the changes took effect, it's time to get the dashboard out (Remember that meme, from Snyder's early days in office?) and count the wins and losses.

Don't get us wrong. The Michigan Business Tax was unpopular for good reasons; eliminating it was the right thing to do. But the notion that a massive tax cut would quickly draw sufficient business to swell the state's economy was exaggerated, at best. So, too, is the expectation that residents at the lowest ends of the socioeconomic scale will weather more hardship indefinitely while new jobs trickle in.

Even worse is the still-unfolding impact on cities and school districts, both of which took big hits under Snyder's plans. The new tax on public pensions was projected to bring in about $340 million in new revenue for the state. But the cities and school districts that pay for those pensions have all lost funding since the governor took office. Fiscal instability will soon be the norm for dozens of local governments.

The State of the State is an opportunity for Snyder to begin addressing these imbalances, at least rhetorically. And it's a good starting point for a deeper dive into the governor's dashboard, to see if his grand plans for reviving Michigan's economy need adjusting, halfway through his first term.